Jun 10

Overview

United Spirits Limited (USL) is the one of the largest liquor giants in the world, with a range of well-recognised brands, across Whiskeys, Vodka, Wines and other spirits. With the launch of ‘Spiritz & More’, a multi-brand retail chain for an array of liquor choices, United Spirits Limited (USL) created a new eco-system for meaningful consumer engagements and a good shopping experience across the Indian market. Going one step further, USL wanted to engage with its large consumer base through popular digital channel, including social media, in order to stay connected with them, meet their growing expectations while offering new experiences as well as accessibility.

Challenge

Given this mandate of transporting the ‘Spiritz & More’ experience and its essence onto the Internet, Interakt was faced with the unique challenge of having to market the brand without explicitly marketing its products, owing to the strict Indian regulations banning the marketing of alcohol.

USL being an organization with multiple business lines, each supporting a different set of marketing initiatives and capitalising on various aspects of Indian interests such as cricket, movies, fashion and so on, care was also required to ensure that the online ‘Spiritz & More’ experience, remained completely aligned to its core focus on glamour and lifestyle.

Interakt Solution

Meeting these challenges head on, Interakt conceptualized and delivered a complete solution called SpiritizandMore.com comprising of a comprehensive portal offering content on latest parties in different towns, USL events, information on spirits, responsible drinking and contests, a community section to encourage user participation through blogs and the creation of social networks, Facebook & Twitter presence with daily updates on events, parties, portal updates and contests.

In order to keep the platform relevant and up-to-date during this long-term engagement, Interakt employed the following channels to derive fresh content

• Charted the schedule of USL sponsored or supported events across the country for every 3-month period
• Planned the type and frequency of content to be sourced based on the types of events and activities
• Mapped the content and events on to the SpiritzandMore.com portal, in a way that would be meaningful and interesting for the users
• Conceptualized campaigns around contests, polls and interesting online activities related to these across the different digital channels such as the portal, Facebook & Twitter
• Planned & leveraged email marketing, mobile channels to create awareness of campaigns
• Sourced and utilized third-party content suitable and pertaining to website visitor interests
• Maintained and monitored the digital channels to ensure all that activity was in line with the SpiritzandMore.com branding

And one of the notable highlights of the entire initiative was the engagement of photobloggers across the country, to cover the USL events and provide ‘real’ content on the different channels like the portal, Facebook and Twitter, besides contributions from fashion designers and professionals, at the event themselves.